The Cambridge Companion to Twenty-First Century American Fiction Cambridge Companions to Literature Series

Reading lists, course syllabi, and prizes include the phrase '21st-century American literature,' but no critical consensus exists regarding when the period began, which works typify it, how to conceptualize its aesthetic priorities, and where its geographical boundaries lie. Considerable criticism has been published on this extraordinary era, but little programmatic analysis has assessed comprehensively the literary and critical/theoretical output to help readers navigate the labyrinth of critical pathways. In addition to ensuring broad coverage of many essential texts, The Cambridge Companion to 21st Century American Fiction offers state-of-the field analyses of contemporary narrative studies that set the terms of current and future research and teaching. Individual chapters illuminate critical engagements with emergent genres and concepts, including flash fiction, speculative fiction, digital fiction, alternative temporalities, Afro-futurism, ecocriticism, transgender/queer studies, anti-carceral fiction, precarity, and post-9/11 fiction.

Introduction Joshua L. Miller; Part I. Forms: 1. Short Fiction, Flash Fiction, Microfiction Angela Naimou; 2. Experimental Fiction David James; 3. Speculative Fiction Mark Bould; 4. Graphic Fiction Katalin Orbán; 5. Digital Fiction Scott Rettberg; Part II. Approaches: 6. Afro-Futurism/Afro-Pessimism Candice M. Jenkins; 7. Transpacific Diasporas Julia H. Lee; 8. Hemispheric Routes Mary Pat Brady; 9. Transgender and Transgenre Writing Trish Salah; 10. Climate Fiction Heather Houser; Part III. Themes: 11. Convergence Mark Goble; 12. Dissolution Crystal Parikh; 13. Immobilit Dennis Childs; 14. Insecurity Hamilton Carroll; Further Reading; Index.

Joshua Miller is Associate Professor of English at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Accented America: The Cultural Politics of Multilingual Modernism (2011), editor of the Cambridge Companion to the American Modernist Novel (2015), and co-editor of Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures: Comparative Perspectives (2016).